32. The Video Diaries

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"What the hell do you mean?" I asked, bewildered at this revelation.

"You seriously didn't know?" Nathan seemed bewildered himself.

"How could that have happened?" I asked. "How could he have drowned?"

Nathan shrugged. "He was being weird the last night I saw him. He was sneaking out as usual, but he was telling me goodbye and that he'd miss me. Said he didn't belong here. I just thought that meant he was running away, but he had other plans."

"You're saying he killed himself?" Sayora asked.

"They found one of his shoes on the bridge above the river near the edge of town. Later they found his shirt drifting a mile and a half away," Nathan explained.

"But they never found a body?"

"The river stretches for twelve miles. They don't know what could've happened to the body in all of that. They suspect foul play, but there's nothing to suggest as much," Nathan said. "Nonetheless, the case has been unsolved for a very long time."

"When did this happen?" Sayora asked.

"Couple years ago," he replied. "Late March if I'm remembering correctly."

"The article was dated a little before Kevin disappeared," I added. "So between his escape and Kevin disappearing, Kyle drowned in that river."

"I suppose," Nathan said. "I still don't know who Kevin is though."

"Is there anything else at all you could tell me?" I asked.

Nathan thought this over for a second. "Nothing special, really. Aside from the fact that he'd been all secretive leading up to the night he left. He did mention destroying something hidden in the woods."

"Hidden in the woods?"

"Yeah, something about journals or diaries. Under some floorboards. Something like that, I don't know. He was a weird guy at times."

"Diaries?"

Nathan nodded. "That's about all I know, though."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Thanks for your help."

I moved to leave the building with Sayora and Travis right behind me. I marched straight to my car and got back in the driver's seat.

"Do you believe that?" Sayora asked once she and Travis retook their spots.

"I don't know," I said. "I mean, if Kyle's dead, then it couldn't have been him that killed Danielle."

"No body was ever found, though," Travis pointed out. "How can we be so sure he's actually dead?"

"Is that realistic, though?"

"We all thought Kevin was dead for two years," Sayora said. "It's not too far out there."

I shook my head and sighed. "Do identical twins share the same DNA?"

"It's a very similar DNA structure at least," Sayora said. "I'm not an expert, but I wouldn't say it's one hundred percent the same."

"And how does DNA get tested?" I pressed.

"Percentages," she said. "Like how similar is someone's blood type to the blood found at a crime scene. Fifty perecent? Seventy-eight percent? Ninety? Etcetera."

"That's what I thought."

"Kevin can't really have a twin, can he?" Sayora asked. "It doesn't add up."

"Believe me, I know!" I said. "For that to be true, would mean that Kyle was 'X.'"

"But that doesn't make sense."

"Exactly!" I said. "This whole time I assumed 'X' was Raymond's son. But that can't be true if he's Kevin's twin brother. Kevin is Mom and Dad's birth son, ergo Kyle is biologically Mom and Dad's as well, so where would Raymond's kid fit in all this?"

"Maybe you're looking at this wrong," Travis said from the backseat.

"What do you mean?"

"It's possible that this Kyle guy could be Raymond's son... As well as Kevin."

I took a moment to digest this. "Raymond? The father of Kevin and Kyle?"

"It's possible, man."

"No, it's not!" I said. "Raymond supposedly hid and raised this kid for years. Now even that doesn't fit with this new information, if Kyle was telling Nathan that he'd been locked up in a completely different institution for a long time. Raymond couldn't have been raising him."

"Furthermore," Sayora added, "that would also have to mean that Mariana and Raymond were able to separate the twins and raise them individually. Unless there was some agreement between them and Mauricio, there's no way they could've pulled that off."

"Dad doesn't even know about the affair, so an agreement is out of the question," I said. "Kevin and Kyle were birthed by my parents and not Raymond. That only makes sense."

"Fine," Travis said. "But all this talk about mental institutions... What was Kyle locked up for anyway?"

"Whatever it was, it couldn't have been great, seeing as how Dad and Mom have never mentioned him to me and Kyle had to contact Kevin on his own before jumping off that bridge," I said.

"What was with that whole diary thing?" Travis asked.

"I'm gonna handle that," I said. "I think I know what to do."

"You're not going to fill us in?" Sayora inquired, seeming a little taken aback at the notion.

"It's nothing too important," I lied.

Fact of the matter was, the video diaries had been one of the biggest question marks in this whole thing.

And now I knew where to find them.

"My whole life is a lie," I said after a while with a dry chuckle. "It's laughable how screwed up this is. And you wanna know the worst part?"

"What's that?" Sayora asked.

"Remember when I asked how DNA is tested?"

She nodded.

"Well, I think I found my explanation on how everyone was so certain it was Kevin's remains that were found."

"You mean..."

"I mean there's a high probability that Kyle's DNA was something like a ninety percent match to Kevin's," I said. "And it's his remains that are in that grave dedicated to Kevin."

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School had long been out by the time we arrived back in Hillbury. I dropped Travis and Sayora off at their homes, but I was not going home myself. I would soon have to face the wrath of my parents. I wondered how soon after I ditched them did they notice I was gone.

I parked my car in the usual spot by the edge of the woods and started my hike. This was it. Once I found the diaries, everything would fall into place.

I was impatient as I neared the shack. I went in and immediately began searching the floor. The shack was small and full of junk. I'd always wondered who lived here before they abandoned it.

There was a distasteful smell of mildew all around and the wood was old and dull in color, a drastic contrast to what it once had probably been.

I took tentative steps, tapping my foot on the wood paneling. I listened for a hollow sound. Something that would indicate that there was some hole somewhere underneath the floorboards.

While I didn't notice that, I did notice a disturbed wood panel in the far right corner of the room. I went over to it and kneeled down. The plank in this corner was loose.

I pulled on it with one hand and it completely came out of the space it was haphazardly placed in. I was now looking into a hole and could make out the shape of a tiny object.

I reached in to grab it and was filled with joy when I saw what was in my hands.

A flash drive.

Kevin had to have saved the videos on it. This was the hiding spot he hid it in. Nathan said Kyle wanted to destroy the files on it though. Obviously he never got the chance to. Why he wanted to do that? I didn't know yet.

But I was gonna find out.

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I quite literally ran to my bedroom when I got home. I didn't see anyone home. Weird.

I plopped on my bed and threw open my laptop, plugging in the flash drive after doing so. I had no idea how many videos would be on here. I only hoped that it would be enough to provide a real explanation for what was going on.

The laptop was on and I saw that the files were available almost immediately. I clicked a couple things before I made it to the file that had been saved on the drive.

I took a deep breath and clicked on it.

There were three videos ready to play on screen for me. Each one was a minute or two long. The length of the videos weren't important, but how much information each contained was extremely important.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and clicked on the first one.

It took a few seconds to load, but once it did, he was right there on the screen.

He was adjusting the camera on what I presumed was a tripod. He kept looking, adjusting and focusing until he was clearly seen in the video. He sat back in a chair he'd set up and he had a smile on his face.

"I don't know where to start here," he said. "But hey, little bro!"

He was talking to me. It felt unreal. He looked so healthy and full of life. He didn't look so much like that these days. I kept my attention on the video.

"I guess I shouldn't waste a lot of time with these things, so I'll get right into it," he went on. "I recently discovered something that, even now, still has me a bit shaken. Um... it's very jarring and I feel a bit betrayed by it, but it's a new reality for me and now, since you're seeing this, you too.

Ricky, if you're seeing this, it means something happened to me. What it is, I don't know, but I've been wanting to tell you what's been happening for a very long time and this is my backup plan if I don't get to tell you face-to-face.

I'm scared of someone. A person that I made the mistake of inviting in my life knowing the background story.

This person, turns out is a brother of mine. A twin brother actually. I'll get to that story soon. But his name is Kyle and he's been sneaking out of some mental hospital to meet with me. I still don't know how he pulls that off, but he does. Initially, everything was great. He reached out to me and we met at the shack. I've saved those letters for your viewing. He was nice. We had a lot in common with each other and it felt like there was a piece of me being set back in place when we hung out. A piece that I didn't even know I was missing."

He paused a moment before continuing.

"It was so bizarre having someone around that looked exactly like me. And it was cool, what we had. But things started to change. He was suddenly very eager to be out and about. I couldn't let him just wander around town with people I know living here. They'd ask questions. I wasn't especially eager to go telling everyone family business and why my mom gave up one of her twin boys to a mental institution. But I'll tell you.

There was something wrong with Kyle. Like, really wrong. He never went into detail about it, but Mom and Dad made the decision to get him help. Eventually, as years went on, they just stopped visiting him. They only visited once or twice since he's been at SPI, the place they transferred him to. That's the story he told anyway. He said he was lonely. Very lonely.

I told him about my life. My family. You. I saw something in his eyes when I mentioned you. I couldn't tell what it was, but if I had to guess; it was jealousy. He started asking me more and more about you. He even wanted to meet you. I said no.

Since then, he's been really weird. Our meetings are filled with a tension I can't explain now, and I feel like he'll do something bad.

Maybe I'm paranoid, and honestly I'm not okay. Just knowing that Mom and Dad were hiding this really eats at me. I confided this in Raymond, knowing that I could trust him and he admitted to knowing about Kyle. He told me to stop seeing Kyle and honestly, I'm thinking I should take that advice.

Anyway, I don't want these to be super long, so I'll stop here. I'm sure I'll have more to tell you soon. See you next time, Rick."

Then the video ended.

There wasn't exactly a lot of new, game changing information, but I knew now that Raymond was aware of Kyle being out in the world that year Kevin was killed.

So Raymond had to have suspected Kyle was involved. But by that time, Kyle had killed himself, so what happened there? Did Raymond ever mention these meetings between Kevin and Kyle to my parents?

Here I was looking for answers and still ended up with more questions.

Hopefully, something within the following videos explained some more things.

I clicked on the next one.

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